Pet stores and humane society environments are well known to display small animals in cages that typically contain wire mesh floors and walls. To patrons who visit these establishments, these cages often appear unsightly and undesirable. The resulting appearance of small cages individually or stacked together can be depressing sights to visitors of the sites.
The cages can be difficult to clean and sanitize since animal waste from upper cages can drop through the wire mesh floors to cages stacked underneath the cages. Additionally, a cage located directly on a floor must be physically moved in order to adequately clean beneath it. Furthermore, it is clearly difficult to easily clean all exterior surface sides of the individual wires in the mesh type floors, walls, and ceiling of the traditional cages without having to wipe directly about each of the wires.
Single and stacked cages generally placed directly on flat surfaces must be manually lifted in order to be moved. Often, the animals must be removed from the cages so that the cages can be moved to different locations, which also results in the uncomfortable and time consuming displacement of the animals during the move.
Additionally, the animals inside these cages often appear unhappy and unrelaxed as well as bored. The animals can have little comfort in having to sit and/or walk and/or stand on wire type mesh floors, and the like.
Adoption of the animals stored and displayed in these cages can be hindered because of the unhappy and unrelaxed state of the animals, as well as the depressing, unsightly and undesirable appearances of traditional storage cages at these pet stores and humane society environments.
The cages have little or no privacy since the cages are wide open. Additionally, traditional cages are so small that they allow for little movement of the animals or the cages are so confined that many small animals must stay in either a fixed position or restricted space within the cages. Thus, the traditional cages contribute to atrophy effects in the animals.
Various types of pet type houses have been proposed over the years. See for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. Des. 228,537 to Jennings; Des. 257,292 to Brown; Des. 270,297 to Lovitt; Des. 298,577 to Faxon; Des. 349,783 to Berger; Des. 335,002 to Read et al.; Des. 371,641 to Crowley; D443,956 to Rudnick; 3,561,757 to Schillig; 4,301,766 to Piccone; 4,347,807 to Reich; 5,711,253 to Phillips et al.; 5,964,189 to Northrop et al.; and 6,058,887 to Silverman.
Jennings '537; Faxon '577; Northrop '189 and Silverman '887 each shows structures include box type structures with openings for mostly single animals that does not allow for safely storing and confining the animals within the structures. Schillig '757; Piccone '766; Reich '807; and Phillips et al. '253 each show plural block arrangements each with openings which appear to be used primarily as open playgrounds and/or constant open storage containers for pets.
Brown '292 and Berger '783 each shows pedestal/stand supported obtrusive structures with specific height requirements that clearly wastes space between the “modular house.” Lovitt '297 shows a multi-tiered interconnected display with stairs and rotating wheel that appears to be no more than an enlarged gerbil type cage. Read et al. '002 shows a see-through structure resembling a little house with wide open spaces offering no privacy to the animals. Rudnick '956 shows an animal habitat requiring tube connected blocks that clearly requires large amounts of space.
These depicted structures are generally not built for the comfort of the pets being stored. Additionally, none of these proposed houses are easily adaptable for aesthetically displaying and safely housing several or more small pets, such as cats in a specific space, such as in a pet store. The above devices are also generally not mobile, and instead must be physically disassembled in order to be moved.
Thus, the need exists for solutions to the above problems with the prior art.